Nikon LS50, trouble with loading one roll of film

[f16sunshine]

This has been the week of Nikon scanning BS in my office.

Latest is one particular roll of film that the scanner simply can not see.
Each negative either spit back out or miss-framed pre-view strip.
It's HP5 in Rodinal stand. Frame spacing is perfect. Exposures are plenty dense. Fixed perfectly. No scratches or bugaboos that I can see. Maybe a bit of black on some edges but not far in or continuous.
It's just a test roll I ran with a new lens. Not important but this is kookie!
My V700 had no issues.

I try putting in another HP5 neg and the scanner goes right to work.
Any clues? I searched for known issues under a couple different queries and get nothing.
I'm relatively new to this machine and Nikon scanner…. having only acquired this LS50 last year.

The Error message from Nikon scan 4 reads "a serious problem occurred loading film please check your owners manual".
Owners manual says nothing that helps.
Anyone?

 

[f16sunshine]

BTW

Yes I cleaned the rollers and blew out the Sa-21 very well with a rocket.
I think the feeder is working correctly as other strips of 6 scan up nicely.
This just blows my microscopic ball of gray matter all to bits!

 

[f16sunshine]

Bumping Anyone have any idea on this?

 

[Godfrey]

Sounds darn weird. Have you tried driving the scanner with VueScan? You can download and test it.

G

 

[wintoid]

I used to have the 5000 and once in a while it didn't like a strip of negs, so I would feed it in backwards and it would always be fine.

 

[f16sunshine]

It must just be a bizarre anomaly.
Of the 5 1/2 strips that this roll produced only one strip can bee seen by the scanner and, the frame spacing is off with this one.
Vuescan and Nikon Scan4 have issues with it.
I thought my Vuescan was going kookoo and removed and re-loaded it twice. It was this negative.
Next I will scan it with the fh-3 single frame holder for a few frames.
I batched scanned the roll on my V700 with no problems.
Kinda nuts though. If Nikon was still building these things I would send them a strip to see what they come up with.

 

[sanmich]

I had a similar problem with a SA-21.
It was causing trouble with a good part of my delta 100 films.
No trouble with TX, or E6 films.
After I tested another SA21 on my scan and my SA21 on another scanner, and so made sure the problem was with my feeder unit, I sent it (the SA-21) to Nikon US and they took care of it.
Incidentally, I also decided that this scanner is seriously diminished without the auto-feeding ability, and bought a backup SA21.
Both units work now, both hacked as SA30.

 

[f16sunshine]

Update on this.
It seems to be a batch of HP5 film.
The factory coding "etched" along the edge of the sprocket holes must be causing the issue.
It's a stronger dark black etching than in other rolls of HP5. From a pack that expires Feb 2015. Unfortunately my last 30 rolls are all from this batch. I can do them on my V700 as a batch 🙁
Today I souped another roll from that pack of film along with a roll of Tri-X.
My LS 50 is rejecting the HP5 strips try after try but, the Tri-x roll is working fine.
The edge coding must be fouling up the frame space sensor in the scanner.
The error message says the strip is either to short or too long. I can screen grab it if anyone is actually interested.
End report.